A person watching a small child playing with a ball is actually not seeing him with his or her eyes. Eyes are only responsible for delivering light to the back of the eyes. When light reaches the retina, an upside-down and two-dimensional view of the child is formed on the retina. Subsequently this view of the child is converted into an electric current, which is then transmitted to the visual center at the back of the brain, where the child's figure is seen perfectly in three dimensions. Who then sees the child's figure in three dimensions with perfect clarity at the back of the brain? Clearly, the entity we are dealing with is the Soul, which is a being beyond the brain.

We are given tiny distorted upside-down images in the eyes, and we see separate solid objects in surrounding space. From the patterns of simulation on the retinas we perceive the world of objects, and this is nothing short of a miracle.2

     All of these facts lead to the same conclusion. Throughout our lives, we always assume that the world exists outside of us. However, the world is within us. Although we believe that the world lies outside us, it is in the smallest part of our brain. For example, the CEO of a company might consider the company building, his car in the parking lot, his house by the beach, his yacht, and all the people who work for him, his lawyers, his family, and his friends to be outside of his body. However, all of these things are merely visions formed in his skull, in a tiny part of his brain.

     He is unaware of this fact and, even if he knew, would not bother to think about it. If he stood proudly next to his latest-model luxury car, and the wind blew a piece of dust or a small object into his eye, he might gently scratch his itching, open eye and notice that the "material things" he saw moved upside down or to the sides. He might then realize that material things seen in the environment are not stable.

     What this demonstrates is that every person throughout his or her life witnesses everything inside their brain and cannot reach the specific material objects that supposedly cause their experiences. The images we see are copies in our brains of the objects that we assume to exist outside of us. We can never know to what extent these copies resemble the originals, or whether or not the originals even exist.

     Although German psychiatry professor Hoimar Von Ditfurth is a materialist, he acknowledges this fact about scientific reality:

     No matter how we put the argument, the result doesn't change. What stands before us in full shape and what our eyes view is not the "world". It is only its image, a resemblance, a projection whose association with the original is open to discussion.3

     For example, when you take a look at the room in which you are sitting, what you see is not the room outside of you, but a copy of the room that exists in your brain. You will never be able to see the original room with your sense organs.

     How can a bright and colorful image appear in your dark brain?

     
     There is another point that should not be neglected; light cannot pass through the skull. The physical area in which the brain is located is completely dark, and light cannot possibly penetrate it. However, incredible as it may seem, it is possible to observe a bright and colorful world in this total darkness. Colorful natural beauty, bright sights, all the tones of the color green, the colors of fruits, the designs of flowers, the brightness of the sun, people walking on a busy road, fast cars in traffic, clothes in a shopping mall-are all created in the dark brain. 

     Imagine a barbecue burning in front of you. You can sit and watch the fire for a long time, but throughout this entire time, your brain never deals with the original of light, brightness or heat from the fire. Even when you feel its heat and see its light, the inside of your brain remains dark and maintains a constant temperature. It is a profound mystery that, in the darkness, the electrical signals turn into colorful, bright visions. Anyone who thinks deeply will be amazed by this wondrous occurrence.

     Light is also composed in our brain

     
      While discussing what science has discovered about vision, we mentioned that the light we receive from the outside gives rise to some movements of the eye cells, and these movements form a pattern from which our visual experience emerges. However, there is another point that we need to make: Light, as we perceive it, does not reside outside of our brain. The light we know and understand is also formed within our brain. What we call light in the outside world, which is supposedly outside our brains, consists of electromagnetic waves and particles of energy called photons. When these electromagnetic waves or photons reach the retina, light, as we experience it, begins to come into existence. This is the way light is described in physical terms:

The inside of a brain is completely dark. Light does not reach the inside of the brain

     The term "light" is used for electromagnetic waves and photons. The same term is used in physiology, as the feeling experienced by a person when electromagnetic waves and photons strike the retina of the eye. In both objective and subjective terms, "light" is a form of energy coming into existence in the eye of a person, which a person becomes aware of through the retina by the effects of vision.4

     Consequently, light comes into existence as a result of the effects that some electromagnetic waves and particles cause in us. In other words, there is no light outside our bodies which creates the light we see in our brains. There is only energy. And when this energy reaches us we see a colorful, bright, and light-filled world.

There are no colors in the world outside. Colors are only formed in the eyes and brain of the observer. Only energy packets of various wavelengths exist in the external world. It is our brains that transform this energy into colors.

     Colors also originate in our brains

     Starting from the time, we are born, we deal with a colorful environment and see a colorful world. However, there isn't one single color in the universe. Colors are formed in our brains. Outside there are only electromagnetic waves with different amplitudes and frequencies. What reaches our brains is the energy from those waves. We call this "light", although this is not the light we know as bright and shiny. It is merely energy. When our brains interpret this energy by measuring the different frequencies of waves, we see "colors". In reality, the sea is not blue, the grass is not green, the soil is not brown and fruits are not colorful. They appear as they do because of the way we perceive them in our brains. Daniel C. Dennett, who is known for his books about the brain and consciousness, summarizes this universally accepted fact:

     The common wisdom is that modern science has removed the color from the physical world, replacing it with colorless electromagnetic radiation of various wavelengths.5

     In The Amazing Brain, R. Ornstein and R. F. Thompson have stated the way colors are formed as follows.

     'Color' as such does not exist in the world; it exists only in the eye and brain of the beholder. Objects reflect many different wavelengths of light, but these light waves themselves have no color.6

     In the retina in the eye, there exist three groups of cone cells, each of which react to different wavelengths of light. The first of these groups is sensitive to red light, the second is sensitive to blue light and the third is sensitive to green light. Different levels of stimulus to each of the three sets of cone cells gives rise to our ability to see a world full of color in millions of different tones.

      In order to understand why this is so, we must analyze how we see colors. The light from the sun reaches an object, and every object reflects the light in waves of different frequencies. This light of varying frequency reaches the eye. (Remember that the term "light" used here actually refers to the electromagnetic waves and photons, not the light which is formed in our brains.) The perception of color starts in the cone cells of the retina. In the retina, there are three groups of cone cells, each of which reacts to different frequencies of light. The first group is sensitive to red light, the second is sensitive to blue light, and the third is sensitive to green light. With the different levels of stimulations of these cone cells, millions of different colors are formed. However, the light reaching the cone cells cannot form colors by itself. As Jeremy Nathans of John Hopkins Medical University explains, the cells in the eye do not form the colors:

     All that a single cone can do is capture light and tell you something about its intensity. It tells you nothing about color.7

     Because of God's perfect creation, we see electrical signals as a bright world, full of color, made up of millions of shades of color, and we enjoy what we see. This is an extraordinary miracle that must be carefully considered.

     The cone cells translate the information they get about colors to electrical signals thanks to their pigments. The nerve cells connected with these cells transmit these electrical signals to a special area in the brain. The place where we see a world full of color throughout our lives is this special area in the brain.

     This demonstrates that there are no colors or light beyond our brains. There is only energy which moves in the form of electromagnetic waves and particles. Both color and light exist in our brains. We do not actually see a red rose as red simply because it is red. Our brain's interpretation of the energy that reaches our eye leads us to perceive that the rose is red.

     Color blindness is proof that colors are formed in our brains. A small injury in the retina can lead to color blindness. A person affected by color blindness is unable to differentiate between red and green colors. Whether an external object has colors or not is of no importance, because the reason why we see objects colorful is not their being colorful. This leads us to the conclusion that all of the qualities that we believe belong to the object are not in the outside world, but in our brains. However, since we will never be able to go beyond our perceptions and reach the outside world, we will never be able to prove the existence of materials and colors. The famous philosopher, Berkeley, acknowledges this fact with the following words:

     If the same things can be red and hot for some and the contrary for others, this means that we are under the influence of misconceptions and that "things" only exist in our brains.8

In the picture shown above, the green area on the left hand side appears to be dark while the green area on the right hand side appears lighter. In fact, the tones of both greens, as shown in the bottom are exactly the same. The red and orange colors next to the green bands trick us into thinking that the two green colors are of different tones. This again points to the fact that we do not see the original material world, we only see our interpretation of it in our brain.

2- R. L. Gregory, Eye and Brain: The Psychology of Seeing, Oxford University Press Inc., New York, 1990, p. 9
3- Hoimar von Ditfurth, Der Geist Fiel Nicht Vom Himmel (The Spirit Did Not Fall From The Sky), p. 256
4- M. Ali Yaz, Sait Aksoy, Fizik 3 (Physics 3), Surat Publishers, Istanbul, 1997, p. 3
5- Daniel C Dennett, Brainchildren, Essays on Designing Minds, The MIT Press, Cambridge, 1998, p. 142
6- Daniel C Dennett, Brainchildren, Essays on Designing Minds, p. 142
7- www.hhmi.org/senses/a/a110.htm
8- Georges Politzer, Principes Elémentaires de Philosophie (Elementary Principles of Philosophy), Editions Sociales, Paris, 1954, p. 40

Home Page